


i'm the mess you'd wear with pride

by malikjaureguis



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-04
Updated: 2013-07-04
Packaged: 2017-12-17 17:06:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/869928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malikjaureguis/pseuds/malikjaureguis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She raises her eyes to the ghost in the mirror. — alison/beth</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'm the mess you'd wear with pride

**Author's Note:**

> wrote this on the fly just now, so i make no promises about its quality. but just, soccer cop - so many emotions.

i'm the mess you'd wear with pride

  
_well, i'd like to think i'm the mess you'd wear with pride,_   
_like some empty dress on the bed you've laid out for tonight._   
_maybe i'll tell you sometime._   


— i go to the barn because i like the, band of horses

Everything is coming to a halting, shuddering stop.

She keeps her hardened masquerade up for the rest of soccer practice, but when she gets home and she sends the kids to the basement to drink their juice boxes, Alison rests hunched over the bathroom sink. Her knuckles glow white, fingers wrapped painfully hard around the marble edge. Her breathing is ragged, and slow, and her body is captured by a tremor that just won't let her go.

 _It can't be_.

She keeps her gaze transfixed on the broken tap, until the subtle drip-drip of the water swells into a painful cacophony. All sounds seem to rush toward her, beating like a bass drum against her ears. It's all so loud and it's all so shrill, and the one sound that stands out amongst the rest is the sound of a train screeching to a rusty halt -

 _It can't be_.

Alison takes a hoarse breath into her mouth, and she raises her eyes to the ghost in the mirror.

She sees herself first, bright red lipstick and hair scraped back into a high ponytail - nothing extraordinary. But then everything starts to shift, and she sees Beth, hair tucked away in a messy bun and quivering lips. Beth's eyes were always bright, and in the mirror she sees them glitter, a story unfolding in the pupils every time she blinks.

Alison gasps then, choking on the pressure building in her throat, and she has to drag her eyes away from the mirror - because it's not Beth in the mirror, it's just her. Just Alison. The simplistic soccer mom who can't get rid of the stick up her ass. She's not Beth, she'll never be Beth - and no one else will be able to be her either, no matter whose face they carry around with them.

_It can't be._

She presses her eyeballs against her palms, before taking them away and seeing the black dots pop against her vision. She gulps on air that threatens to become saltwater as she blindly tears away the mirror, to reveal the medicine cabinet filled with half-empty orange bottles of prescription pills with CHILDS, BETH and HENDRIX, DONNIE and HENDRIX, ALISON branded in typewriter font along the labels. Her fingers tickle the edges of them all, until she just grabs one and unscrews the top with shaky hands (it takes her a few seconds longer than it usually does, and with that her desperation increases tenfold). She pours one, then two, then three, then with finality four little cylindrical pills into her palm, and throwing her head back, tosses them all onto her tongue. She swallows harshly, no water and no whiskey to chase them down her esophagus, and she thinks she can feel them rattling down against her skin for a second.

And in the next second, she slumps against the wall, head resting on the toilet bowl, as she drags her arms into herself and tries to quell the shivers.

 _It can't be_.


End file.
